Pages

Thursday, December 29, 2016

‘Tis the season for lists and lists and lists. I already did
my top ten movies of 2016, followed by my top ten horror movies of 2016—if we’re being honest, it was a strong year for horror, so
there’s a ton of crossover. Now, what the hell, it’s time for my top science
fiction films of the 2016.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

It’s the last week of 2016, I don’t have any reviews to
write, Carrie Fisher just died, and the whole world is covered in shit. For
some reason, these bleak circumstances seem a wholly appropriate place to drop
a list of my top horror movies of 2016. There are certainly some grim times to
be found among these titles.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Without fail, some people grouse about how that particular
365-day journey around the sun was a bad year for movies. 2016 is no exception,
a circumstance made all the more egregious because so many giant blockbusters
sucked ass or, perhaps even worse, wound up inane and tepid and unmemorable in
every regard.

Monday, December 26, 2016

It was a merry Christmas, indeed. Not for the usual, warm,
fuzzy, holiday nonsense that other people have been compelling me to endure for
damn near 40 years against my will. No, on this day we set aside to celebrate
fat dudes and the savior of humanity or whatever, I’m in a festive mood because
we got our first look at Alien: Covenant, and holy shit
balls. Like I said, merry Christmas, indeed.

Friday, December 23, 2016

Admittedly, this isn’t the freshest bit of news, but since
it came out a few days ago, I haven’t stopped thinking about it for more than a
couple of minutes. After he floored me with Arrival and
wowed me with that brief Blade Runner 2049 teaser trailer, I
keep saying that I hope director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) continues to splash around in
the science fiction end of the pool. And it looks like he may do just that.
Reports say he could helm an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi
novel Dune.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Already a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play, Denzel Washington's film adaptation of August Wilson's Fences is
going to add some accompanying award hardware to the roster this year, most
notably in the acting categories. This, even as it struggles, often
unsuccessfully, to distinguish itself from its stage roots.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Because I’m a super fancy film critic (i.e. I spend most of
my free time sitting silently in dark rooms watching movies most people never
see; writing about them online, where no one reads about them, for little to no
money; and talking about these movies no one sees with other likeminded
obsessives—jealous?), I get to vote in super fancy end-of-the-year film critic
polls. One of these is the Seattle Film Critics Society, which just announced
the 2016 Seattle Film Awards nominations.

Back in 2011, André Øvredal made easily my favorite found
footage horror joint, Troll Hunter. Though it’s been a bit,
the Norwegian director is back with his third feature, and English-language
debut, The Autopsy of Jane Doe. And it’s a perfect genre
antidote to big blockbusters and end-of-the-year award bait. Don’t get me
wrong, I love and appreciate both of those things, but damn it gets exhausting,
so it’s nice to have a bit of nasty horror counterprogramming.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Movies are an accumulation of thousands upon thousands of
choices. The collective decisions of directors, actors, writers, editors, DPs, and
even casting agents, add up to the final product that makes it to the silver
screen. And sometimes, just sometimes, a single one of those fucks it up for
everyone and sends the flaming wreckage of a movie into the waiting fireball of
a sun. Such is the case with Morten Tyldum’s deep space romance,
Passengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Bad guys, apparently you didn’t get the message the first
time, but you really, really, need to stop messing with John Wick. It’s not
going to end well. To be fair, I hope you never learn this lesson, since that
would make John Wick: Chapter 2 the last in the saga of the reluctant
hitman, and I don’t that to happen because this new trailer and poster look amazing.

Okay, I’m going to come right out and say this: Denis Villeneuve
should only make science fiction movies from now on. Arrival
is going to land very near the apex of my top movies of 2016 list, and though
it’s less than two-minutes-long, the first trailer for the long-in-the-works
Blade Runner 2049 looks spectacular.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Wait, what? Vin Diesel casually breaks a gun over his thigh
like it’s nothing? That’s some next level Bo Jackson shit right there. Okay,
xXx: Return of Xander Cage, if you didn’t already have my
attention, you sure as hell do after the latest in a line of absurd trailers.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

After Whiplash whipped up a frenzy,
writer/director Damien Chazelle could do damn near anything he wanted. Helm a
superhero movie? Probably could have done that. Tackle a big-budget summer
blockbuster or weighty Oscar-bait drama? So many others have followed that
path. But what does he do? He makes La La Land, a full-on
throwback musical. And he absolutely kills it.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

What are you doing? Why are you reading this? Odds are, you
already know whether or not you’re going to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Hell, most of you probably have tickets (or you’re not seeing
it until 2017). You don’t need me to tell you whether it’s good or not. Go see
Rogue One. Come back afterwards and we can discuss it then.

Monday, December 12, 2016

Between Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto turning his back on his
makeshift family, Charlize Theron’s terrible, terrible pseudo-dreadlocks (is
she going to a rave?), and a goddamn submarine bursting through the icepack and
getting into a high-speed chase with a Lamborghini and a tank, I have no clue
what’s going on in the first trailer for The Fate of the
Furious, the latest in the Fast and Furious
franchise. But holy hell, whatever it is, I love the shit out of it.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Looks like Christmas came early, True Believers. Last night
arrived with snow (at least here in Seattle) and two, count ‘em, two, new
trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming. The first is the domestic
version, followed by an international take, and together, they feature a nice
collection of footage.

Like many film fans, when I hear Hollywood plans to reboot a
franchise I love and adore, my immediate reaction is not positive. That said,
there have been incredible reboots and re-launches, and for my money, the best
is the revamped Planet of the Apes saga. Rise of the
Planet of the Apes was better than anyone expected, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is legitimately great—it wound up on my top ten list that year. The next chapter, War for the Planet of the
Apes drops summer 2017, and if this first trailer is in any way
representative of the finished product, good golly we’re in for another
fantastic ape-versus-human adventure.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

When an ambitious young journalist tracks down what he hopes
will be a career-launching story, he falls into a world of high-stakes
political intrigue. Such is the set up of Nathan Williams’ gorgeous,
filmed-in-Washington, shot-on-a-shoestring debut feature, If There’s a Hell Below.

A certain level of utter chaos and mayhem from the guy
behind Tokyo Gore Police and Mutant Girl
Squad is to be expected, and the trailer for Japanese director Yoshihiro Nishimura’s
Kodoku Meatball Machine does not disappoint on that front.
Check it out below, it’ll be the most insane two minutes of your day. If it isn’t,
holy shit, you’re having a weird one.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

As much as I do enjoy a number of Marvel movies, 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy stands out as my favorite. It’s so different than everything else the comic book studio has produced, and the deep space high adventure is just so damn much fun. So, it’s understandable I’m psyched for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the fact that it releases fantastic trailers like this latest one only stokes that fire.

Friday, December 2, 2016

It feels like it’s been forever since André Øvredal dropped Troll Hunter in our laps, and to be fair,
that was in 2011, so it has been a while. But the Norwegian helmer is back with
his first English-language horror offering, The Autopsy of Jane
Doe, which his here with a creepy new trailer for you to gawk at.

Earlier this year I reread Margaret Atwood’s speculative
fiction masterwork The Handmaid’s Tale. It had been a while,
but I was struck by how prescient and immediate and current the 1985 novel felt.
People are fond of debating which fictional dystopia we’re going to wind up
with—the frontrunners are always George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World (though the current landscape
certainly feels like a synthesis of the two).

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Any Martin Scorsese movie is going to be an automatic awards
contender; that’s just a fact. And we’re talking biggies here, too, like Oscar,
not just some random Seattle film asshole’s end of the year top ten list. Such
is the case with his latest, Silence, though it’s been a
tight race to see if it would squeak in under the deadline and make the cut for
2016. This has now been decided with a resounding yes, and there’s a tense new
trailer just in case you need extra motivation to get up for a Martin Scorsese
movie. Check it out after the jump.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Diversity and empowerment took a swift shot recently, which
is why Disney’s latest animated offering, Moana, couldn’t
have arrived at a better time. But it’s also more than just a welcome respite
from the ugliness currently popping up with alarming frequency outside. It’s
also an epic adventure, the type that girls and young women—and young people in
general—everywhere are sure to imagine themselves embarking on.

Friday, November 18, 2016

When it was released in 1971, the critical response to Robert
Altman’s revisionist anti-western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller,
was positive, but tempered. Co-star Julie Christie received an Academy Award
nomination, celebrated cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s gauzy camerawork earned
a BAFTA nomination, and a few other accolades added up. Over the years,
however, it’s become recognized as a classic of the American New Wave. A
maverick, anti-establishment feature, and the Criterion Collection just
released a fantastic new Blu-ray worthy of that elevated status.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

One of the biggest knocks on Gareth Edwards’ 2014
Godzilla reboot was that the titular King of the Monsters
only actually appeared on screen for like ten minutes or whatever. Judging by
this new trailer, that’s not going to be an issue for Kong: Skull
Island. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kings of Summer) and company certainly don’t skimp on the monkey.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

A movie based on a text book, even one for fictional teenage
wizards, is something of a hard sell. But Fantastic Beast and Where to
Find Them captures the wonder and magic of the wizarding world of Harry Potter. While extant fans will get the most mileage, and the
connections are obvious—though it thankfully never veers into
Hobbit-esque straight up shilling for the previous franchise—it
stands on its own, and the high adventure and marvelous action astound.

Friday, November 11, 2016

It’s been a rough week for a lot of folks. People are
looking for hope, and maybe, just maybe, two new international trailers for
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story can help with that a bit. Hope and resistance are what we've got to lean on right now, and like what we’ve seen thus far, they hammer that home hard once again.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Remember a few days ago when movies seemed way more
important than they do right now? Those were good times. (For the record, I
still believe film and books and music and art are vitally important—we will
need them desperately in the coming days—I’m just being hyperbolic, so go watch
movies like Moonlight and maybe give THIS ARTICLE a read.) The
world has apparently decided to remain turning, and Hollywood keeps kicking out
movies. And that includes Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a
Thousand Planets, and we’ve got the first trailer for your perusal.
It’s straight up bananas.

Monday, November 7, 2016

Stunt-performer-turned-director Chad Stahelski (with partner
in crime David Leitch) turned in one of the best modern action movies with
John Wick, and I’m understandably pretty jazzed about John Wick: Chapter 2. Stahelski tackled the sequel solo (while Leitch
helms the upcoming spy thriller The Coldest City), but that’s
not all he has on his plate. He’ll direct a movie called Triple
Threat, which just so happens to star three of the preeminent movie
badasses of the moment: Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, and Tiger Chen.

Action auteur Ringo Lam has a penchant for movies titled
BLANK on Fire. Though to be fair, there are usually a great
many things on fire and exploding in his films. His resume includes the likes
of City on Fire, School on Fire, and
Prison on Fire (as well as Prison on Fire
2). And he’s back at it with a trailer for Sky on
Fire, which appears to be everything we can hope for.

Friday, November 4, 2016

A Gareth Evans movie is always good news. It’s been too long
since he pummeled us all about the head and neck with The
Raid and The Raid 2 (and, of course,
Merantau). But he’s back with a new project in the works
called Apostle, and as if that’s not enough, he’s bringing
badass leading man Dan Stevens along for the ride.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Marvel movies take a great deal of (often very warranted)
heat for being overly similar. It’s one thing to create an overarching
aesthetic in a shared cinematic universe and lay out markers that identify a film
as a piece of a larger work. It’s another when every film cranked out starts to
feel like the same damn thing. The comic book giant’s latest endeavor, the
mystical adventure Doctor Strange, is unique in that it both
manages to buck this trend while falling face-first into most of the pitfalls.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

On one hand, writer/director Barry Jenkins’
Moonlight is a relatively simple story: a young man coming
of age, trying to figure out who he is and where he fits in this world. That’s
a tale told countless times. On the other hand, the story is nuanced and
complex—like growing into adult hood tends to be—and the result is wholly
unique and lovely and moving.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

I know it gets piles of hate, and it’s a deeply flawed film
to be sure, but I still totally dig Prometheus. It’s grand
and epic and ambitious, it’s as immersive a world as Ridley Scott has created
in I don’t know how the hell long, and it’s badass as hell to boot. All of the criticisms
are warranted, they just don’t impact my enjoyment like they do for many
people.

Monday, October 31, 2016

I really wanted to like The Eyes of My
Mother. It had great reviews, was supposedly a brutal, terrifying
slow burn, and all around sounded like my jam. While it is all of those things,
it just didn’t do it for me. (You can read my REVIEW if you’re so inclined.)
But that’s not going to stop it from opening, and a new trailer is here to
creep you out.

Friday, October 28, 2016

There’s been talk of a new Rambo movie
since, well, Sylvester Stallone dusted off one of his most celebrated
characters for 2008’s Rambo. A number of versions have
kicked around over the years, and now it sounds like not only has one idea
actually stuck, it’s the stupidest fucking one anyone could come up with.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Sure, his last couple of movies haven’t been great
(Elysium was less than stellar, and who the hell thought it
was a good idea to put Die Antwoord in a movie about an adorable robot?), but at
least visually, Neill Blomkamp is still one of the most exciting filmmakers out
there right now. Though the Alien movie he’s been developing
got back-burnered, the South African director has a quick-hitter for us to
enjoy, the short, BMW-produced actioner The Escape. Check it
out below.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Jack Reacher didn’t light the world on
fire, but it’s fine for what it is—a stripped-down, mid-budget, star-driven
actioner. Despite the fact that Tom Cruise is all of 5’7” and the titular
character in Lee Childs’ series of novels is a hulking 6’5”, he has—even with
my father’s constant rantings and railings on the subject—the metaphorical
stature to play the role. Through not a bank-breaking success, the first
picture made enough cash to warrant a sequel, and we all wanted to know if
Cruise could pull it off again in Jack Reacher: Never Go
Back.

Hugh Jackman’s last go-round as the fan-favorite,
claw-having, self-healing mutant Wolverine is bearing down on us quickly, and
Logan, as it’s been dubbed, promises something very
different from your typical X-Feature. Just how different is
readily apparent in the first trailer. Check it out below, along with a red
band version.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Over the last couple of days, we’ve heard rumblings that our
first look at Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 might arrive with
Marvel’s latest joint, Doctor Strange. But lo and behold, we
don’t even have to wait that long, because a shiny new teaser just hit the airwaves.
Check it out below.

Monday, October 17, 2016

If westerns have taught us nothing else—and I’ve taken far
too many life lessons from the genre—it’s that nothing brings a killer who has
renounced killing back to his old ways like messing with his family or his dog.
That’s the primary education a small-town numbskull learns in writer/director Ti
West’s take on the spaghetti western, In a Valley of
Violence.

It’s safe to say, most of us are excited for a Star
Wars movie, any Star Wars movie. But we have a lot
to look forward to with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story later
this year—it’s the first of the “standalone” films, it explores different
corners of that far, far away galaxy we all adore, it’s supposedly a gritty war
film, it has little to do with the Force, and much more. And it looks
incredible, including the latest, purportedly final trailer. Check it out
below.

Monday, October 10, 2016

February 2017 is shaping up to be a wonderful month for fans
of bone-crunching fight scenes and wild gunplay. At least as far as movies go.
Not only does John Wick: Chapter 2 open, but The Raid
star Iko Uwais is back to dismantle dudes in the Mo Brothers’
Headshot. The film made the fall festival rounds and just
dropped a second trailer that continues to deliver on the promise of the first.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Don’t mind that noise, that’s just the sound of me in the corner squealing with glee at the first footage from John Wick: Chapter 2. I won’t waste your time with words on an important occasion like this. Check it out for yourself below.

Friday, October 7, 2016

I maintain that if he’d been born a generation earlier, we’d
speak about Scott Adkins in hushed, reverent tones reserved for the legends of the
action realm. But an accident of birth doesn’t make his movies any less badass
or me anticipate them any less. Next up, he returns to his best known franchise
for Boyka: Undisputed, the fourth installment in the
franchise, and with the release approaching, Millennium Films released a new
clip and trailer.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

The easy comparison for Tate Taylor’s mystery thriller
The Girl on the Train is Gone Girl. They’re
both based on massively popular, best-selling novels, books that became bona fide
cultural sensations, and the marketing team has done everything in its power to
evoke David Fincher’s artfully trashy noir. More accurate comparisons, however,
are the generic thrillers that populate the Lifetime Movie Network. (Also, I can’t
be the only one annoyed that every mystery with an adult female protagonist has to be
The Girl did This, The Girl with That, This
Girl, can I?)